


Much Ado about Fraternisation or the Lack Thereof

by Innwich



Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: 5 Times, Bickering, Enemies to Not Quite Enemies, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Rumors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: 5 times Doc failed to convince the Brits that he was not in a dysfunctional relationship with Lion.
Relationships: Olivier "Lion" Flament/Gustave "Doc" Kateb
Comments: 15
Kudos: 55





	1. 0.

The gag order had been imposed early on after Olivier had joined Rainbow.

“Six agrees with my assessment that this matter is best resolved within the GIGN,” Gilles said, looking around the table.

Emmanuelle had cleared the table of the clutter leftover from an earlier Rainbow briefing, including a projector, two laptops, and the remains of a shock drone. Now the table was covered with bloody tissues and melting ice cubes. Gilles sat at the head of the table. Gustave sat across from Olivier, and pointedly fixed his eyes on Gilles. Emmanuelle and Julien were sitting shoulder to shoulder in their body armours, squeezed together at the remaining side of the table. 

Gilles continued, “It is too divisive for the rest of Rainbow.”

“Olivier clearly acted in violation of the training rules,” Gustave said nasally, keeping his bleeding nose pinched. His helmet straps hung loose by the sides of his face and his bloodied balaclava was rolled up so he could breathe through his mouth. His white nitrile gloves were wet with his own blood. Although he wore gloves out of habit in training exercises, he rarely needed them for their intended purposes of touching and treating wounds.

“I said I was sorry. What more do you want from me?” Olivier snapped. He shifted his hold on the ice pack that he was pressing against the top of his own head. “You shouldn’t have stood so close to me when I got up from the floor.”

“You weren’t supposed to be going anywhere. You were dead,” Gustave said.

“Shuhrat maintained radio silence after detonating the cluster charge. I thought he had killed the hostage and ended the round. He needs to start using his comms during ops,” Olivier said.

“Include it in your debrief with the team later,” Gilles cut in. “I’ve heard enough to believe what happened this afternoon was an accident. Olivier, pay attention to your team's progress in an operation. You may consider adding a helmet to your kit if the CBRN Threat Unit agrees to it. Gustave, don’t let your guard down around downed enemies.”

“Glad that we’ve resolved this ‘divisive’ matter.” Olivier pushed back his chair to leave.

“Sit down. The briefing isn’t over yet,” Gustave said.

“No, I have questions of my own.” Olivier slammed down his icepack and leaned on the table. “Why would Six weigh in on a minor training accident? When did Gilles have time to consult her about it?”

Unable to raise his head without causing the blood in his nose to flow backwards and down his throat, Gustave had to look up from under the raised visor of his helmet to meet Olivier’s glower. “That’s what we’re about to discuss.”

Olivier’s eyes shuttered. His bravado was a thin veil for his insecurity. He was unbearably loud whenever the odds were not in his favour, be it in Nigeria or here in Hereford. In Nigeria, Gustave had had the moral high ground. Here, Olivier was a new addition to Rainbow, while Gustave was an established member that had been with Rainbow from the beginning of its reactivation and had taken no small part in the global hunt for the White Masks. They both knew who Six would pick to stay if Six had to choose between them.

Olivier said to Gilles, “Give it to me straight. Am I being discharged from Rainbow?”

Gilles looked like he would prefer leading a hostage rescue mission to sitting hunched at this table and holding this briefing. He had the unenviable role of being Olivier’s only friend in the base. Not feeling very charitable after being headbutted in the face, Gustave thought unkindly that being Olivier’s friend must be a chore in itself. Gilles sighed with the air of a man being marched in front of a firing squad, and soldiered on. “Six and I have been discussing the ongoing disagreement between you and Gustave. Emmanuelle, can you please repeat what you told Six in your capacity as the only other Rainbow operator involved in the Nigeria quarantine operation?”

“Emotions ran high during the operation due to conflicting opinions on quarantine procedures. Civilian deaths exacerbated tensions. Although the operation was successful, it dealt a significant blow to the morale of onsite personnel,” Emmanuelle said.

Olivier’s scowl softened. “I’m sorry, Emmanuelle. I didn’t know you feel that way. I understand if you want to be transferred from the EE-ONE-D upgrade project.”

“No, Olivier, I work on all of our electronics so that its efficiency is maximized regardless of who is operating it. I don’t agree with the decisions you made in the operation, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t affect how I see you as a squad leader, but I won’t let it divide the team any further,” Emmanuelle said.

“Believe me, I prayed for the men and women that had died in the quarantine, but my mission was to contain the disease and prevent further loss of lives, which I succeeded in doing,” Olivier said.

Resentment was melting out of the hard lines in Olivier’s face. Gilles was nodding encouragingly. It was the first sign of de-escalation in days, and yet it was as if Gustave had never left the temporary treatment centre that had been decommissioned in Nigeria three years ago, as he listened to the same man with the same excuses and the same lack of understanding of what he had done wrong.

“There were too few data for the proposed disease model to be reliable. You left good people for dead because of an unproven chance that they were infected,” Gustave said.

“I couldn’t afford to take any chances. The disease was too contagious.”

“‘Better safe than sorry’ should never apply at the cost of human lives!”

“You were too stubborn to see the big picture. Someone had to keep their eyes open. If I had to bear that cross, then so be it.”

“What about the lives of your loved ones? Would you be so callous to rule them out of the big picture if they were there?”

“Don’t bring my son into this, you son of a bitch!”

“Enough,” Gilles said.

As a man of few words and considerable stature, Gilles didn’t have to raise his voice to make himself heard. Olivier put his hands up in a show of surrender. Gustave shut up and leaned back in his own chair, as his nose throbbed with renewed pain. Contrary to what Olivier might believe, Gustave didn’t derive sadomasochistic pleasure from these fights.

“While I don’t expect you to reconcile your differences anytime soon, I ask that you remain civil to each other,” Gilles said.

“They’re being civil. They’ve moved past the stage where they punch each other’s lights out,” Emmanuelle said.

Gustave gestured at the bloody tissue pressed under his nose. “Despite this, yes, we’ve agreed to refrain from physical altercations.”

“This was an accident,” Olivier said coldly.

“Your truce isn’t good enough if Six is flagging your differences as an issue. We’re working with the best CTUs in the world. We need to present a united front. Remember, we’re not here simply because we excel at our work. We’re here on behalf of the GIGN,” Gilles said. “We enlist for life.”

“We enlist for life.” The GIGN motto was echoed first by Olivier, and then by the other three around the table.

“If you two have a problem with each other, come to me and we’ll resolve it as a team. We keep it to ourselves. This goes for all of you. Am I understood?” Gilles said.

Satisfied with their response, Gilles dismissed the team.

Gustave released the pressure on his nose gingerly, and blood dribbled down his lips. He pinched his nose again. Olivier was hard-headed in more ways than one. Julien, who had been sitting as still as a statue for the entirety of the meeting, unfroze from his petrified state, and handed Gustave the tissues that he was reaching for.

Julien chuckled nervously. “That was the most words I’ve heard Gilles say in one sitting.”

“‘Ephphatha,’ Jesus said,” Olivier said, much to the bewilderment of his less pious colleagues. He didn’t bother to elaborate. He picked up his icepack, and left with Gilles, who offered to carry his full face respirator. Gilles didn’t wait for Olivier to be out of the room before nagging him about not starting a fight with Shuhrat in the debrief later because the Spetznaz operators could get fiercely defensive about their performance in training exercises.

“We’ve made good progress, right? It’s about time we dealt with the elephant in the room,” Julien said.

“Let’s hope we won’t need any more of these briefings in the future,” Gustave said.

“Only if you play nice too,” Emmanuelle said. “I have to go. Elena is waiting for my evaluation report on the EE-ONE-D. Julien, make sure he doesn’t bleed out from his nosebleed, will you?”

“That’s highly unlikely to happen,” Gustave said before he was smothered by Julien’s concern.

The imposition of the gag order marked the beginning of a stable – albeit not as beautiful or friendly as Six’s advisor, Dr. Harry Pandey, would like – work relationship between Gustave and Olivier. As more operators joined Rainbow, Gustave was always working with operators from other CTUs in and off the field, and it helped not to let himself pick at scabs of the past in front of them. His and Olivier’s occasional arguments were no longer ticking time bombs, and instead were controlled explosions detonated in briefing rooms after hours. Gilles presided over their arguments as their judge, while Emmanuelle and Julien attended as their jury and sometimes defence counsel or witness.

Gilles was relieved that he didn’t have to choose between his friend and his amiable colleagues, Emmanuelle was tentatively hopeful that the past was behind her, and Julien was simply glad that his teammates had each other’s back in the field.

A couple of years later, Gustave would blame the gag order for the prevalent rumours concerning his strained and absolutely non-existent marriage to Olivier.


	2. 1.

“Does anyone have eyes on them?” Morowa said on the comms.

“Negative. I just lost a drone to hostiles in Doc’s vicinity,” Max said on the comms.

“Roger that.” Gustave crept across the office, which bore signs of a heavy firefight. Julien had given back as good as he had taken. One of the walls had a man-sized hole where a impact grenade had exploded. Another wall was riddled with bullets. The props on the desks had been knocked over and were scattered across the floor. 

“No enemy contact at the bomb site yet,” Miles said on the comms.

Gustave crouched down as he peeked out of the open doorway, careful to stay out of long sightlines. The barbed wires that he had put in the hallway in the preparation phrase had been destroyed. Julien had called for help on the comms, and had just been shot when Gustave had reached him. It was likely that hostiles were still in the area.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He aimed down his sight and fired at the centre mass of the yellow and black hazmat suit behind him. Distracted, he failed to spot the stun grenade that had landed at his feet.

The bright flash blinded him. His ears rang from the loud blast. The concussion disorientated him. He stumbled away from the explosion and backed into a wall behind him. He barely heard the running footsteps across the room when he took two shots in the gut. His knees buckled. Although the rounds were nonlethal, they packed a punch through his body armour. Another shot took him by surprise from behind and hit him in his lower back. He dropped to the ground.

A spray of rounds hit the wall behind him, narrowly missing his head.

“Three defenders remaining,” the instructor announced on the comms.

“What in God’s name were you doing? A shot at point blank range could take out someone’s eye!”

If there were a God, Gustave would still be deafened and blinded from the stun grenade, the white spots in his vision wouldn’t be fading, and he wouldn’t be wearily watching the two hostiles that were standing over his supposedly dead body. Mike was shouting at Olivier, with his hand wrapped around Olivier’s gun and pushing it away from Gustave.

Olivier said through gritted teeth, “You couldn’t have told me you were going to flash the room?”

Mike yanked Olivier’s gun, and by extent, Olivier’s hands, hard before releasing his hold on the gun. “I did tell you. If you’d followed my lead, you would’ve seen my bloody signal.”

Gustave would like to say that he was surprised at their argument, but Olivier and Mike had nearly come to blows yesterday over friendly fire, which had been another incident that Gustave had had the misfortune to witness. It had happened after Mike’s firefight with Morowa and Gustave in the bomb site. Morowa had had her shield up, and Gustave had been shooting from behind her to force Mike out of the bomb site. Mike had retreated from the room and walked into the shots that Olivier had been firing from the hallway.

Mike had accused Olivier of intentional friendly fire. Olivier had blamed Mike for crossing his line of fire without warning. They had both claimed that it had been the most unprofessional and sloppy fuck-up that they had seen from each other.

“The root of your problem is a lack of communication,” Harry had said in the debriefing. Yesterday had been the eighth day of the current team rotation, and Harry hadn’t given up on his theory that making Olivier and Mike work together extensively in a familiar environment would ease their tension. “You need to talk to your teammates during operations.”

In Gustave’s opinion, it was the quality of communication rather than the quantity of communication that needed addressing.

“If you haven’t had your drone hacked, I wouldn’t have to track down and destroy the drone,” Olivier said.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job. I would’ve EMP’ed the drone like I do any cameras if it’d come near us. You broke ranks to play tag with a fucking drone when I told you to cover me,” Mike said. In his agitation, his accent thickened, making it harder to understand him through his gasmask. He pointed at Gustave. “You want to have a go at him and get your rocks off? Be my guest, but keep your bloody entanglements off the field. There’s a good reason why relationships should be banned in Rainbow. Your affair is affecting your judgment, and it endangers the safety of everyone else in the team.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Olivier said.

“If it were up to me, you’d be dismissed for fraternisation,” Mike said.

“What the fuck are you saying?” Olivier said in a louder voice.

“You heard me,” Mike said. “You think no one knows about your secret GIGN briefings?”

Gustave rose to his feet, in direct violation of the training rules for downed operators, and in the interest of preventing a repeat of the SAS incident, or what the SAS operators called ‘the GIGN incident’.

All nine GIGN and SAS operators had been reprimanded and threatened with disciplinary action for their part in the incident. It hadn’t mattered that Olivier and Mike had instigated the initial fistfight. Gilles had only meant to pull Olivier off of Mike, which Seamus had misinterpreted as a threat to Mike’s safety. Julien had wanted to back Gilles up, and Gustave had gone after Julien to stop him in order to prevent escalation. It had prompted James and Mark to jump in once they had seen the number of GIGN operators converging on the altercation. Emmanuelle had had to deploy her shock drone to put a quick and painful damper on the incident.

“Olivier, stop making a mountain out of every molehill that you come across.” Gustave stepped in. He put his arm out between Olivier and Mike. “You’re mistaken, Mike. Move on. The training exercise is still in progress.”

“Don’t give me that shite,” Mike said.

Olivier started forwards. Gustave shoved him back. “Get a grip on yourself. You’re not a child.”

“Keep your hands off me,” Olivier warned Gustave.

“Come on. Let’s see how much of a tough guy you think you are this time,” Mike taunted Olivier.

Olivier’s nostrils flared beneath his balaclava. Gustave planted himself firmly between Olivier and Mike. Before Olivier could raise his fist, a shot from the adjacent room clipped him in the side of the head. The round shattered on impact and coated his balaclava in white powder.

“Forget you.” Mike ducked behind a desk.

“Four attackers remaining,” the instructor announced.

Mike fired into the room where the shot had come from. Not hearing any return fire, he pulled out an EMP grenade, before he vaulted through the hole in the wall and into another room. “Seamus, I’m heading for the bomb site. Come and cover me.”

Olivier sat down heavily on the floor and yanked off his balaclava. His stubble rasped as he scratched his chin. He had been letting his stubble grow out into the beginning of a goatee, which would have been out of regs in his former unit with the 2nd Dragoon Regiment. Despite his differences with the SAS operators, he had been taking his cue on grooming standards from the likes of Mike and Seamus, and certainly not from anyone in the GIGN.

“What did you say to Mike?” Gustave said.

Olivier pocketed his balaclava. “Nothing. I didn’t provoke him. He hates me. What’s new?”

“He’s implicating the GIGN in your shenanigans,” Gustave said.

“Who knows what that roast beef is thinking.”

“Unlike you, I’d like to address troubled work relationships before they deteriorate beyond salvage.”

Olivier scoffed. “Good luck with that. You may love your neighbour, but your neighbour doesn’t love you.”

Gustave narrowed his eyes. “I sincerely hope you’re not in charge of Bible study at your church.”

Seamus walked past them while crouching low. He glanced in their direction at their conversation, despite his lack of understanding of French. His expression, if any, was hidden behind his gas mask. Gustave wouldn’t have trouble from him; Gustave and Olivier were both KIA. Silently, Seamus crept to the wall and vaulted through the hole that Mike had gone through.

“I’ll give Gilles a heads-up. Certainly he’ll be thrilled to know your differences with Mike are affecting the rest of us again,” Gustave said.

“You can handle it however you want,” Olivier said dismissively. He pulled up his team’s camera feeds on his phone.

“We will sit down and talk about this, Olivier, all of us,” Gustave said.

“I’m sure we will. You talk too much,” Olivier said.

Gustave resisted the familiar urge to bash Olivier’s head against the nearest surface. He took comfort in knowing that this visceral reaction to Olivier wasn’t uncommon within the team. Although Gustave had developed tolerance for difficult patients by the time he had been halfway through his internship, his colleagues always managed to bring the worst out of him no matter where he worked. Gustave took out his phone and checked his team’s camera feeds. At least his team valued his callouts more than Olivier appreciated his company.


End file.
